- Uber aims for 1 million daily drone deliveries with Zipline partnership
Source: Engadget
“You could soon get your Uber Eats order delivered by a Zipline drone thanks to the latest partnership between the two companies. As detailed in an Uber press release, the company is targeting a goal of one million drone deliveries each day by end of 2029. The partnering companies also announced that the first deployments are scheduled for later this year, with drone deliveries first becoming available in Zipline’s existing US markets, including Pea Ridge, Ark. and the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, before expanding to dozens of more cities. On top of the combination of Uber’s network and Zipline’s drone fleet, Uber made a strategic investment into Zipline but didn’t disclose the financial details.” (08/17/26)
- NYC: 72-year-old woman sues gang for attacking her with pepper spray
Source: NBC News
“A 72-year-old woman says her civil rights were violated when an ICE agent in Manhattan sprayed her with pepper spray. Three weeks ago, Linda Wolff, an immigrant rights supporter who can often be found outside of Delaney Hall, said she was in Inwood when she got word ICE agents were [abducting people] in the area. She said she took out her phone and started recording. ‘I went back on the curb and was just filming ICE, and they walked over and they maced me,’ Wolff said Friday. ‘My civil rights were completely violated at that moment.’ Now, Wolff plans to take ICE to court.” (08/17/26)
- Russia: Court jails Kremlin critic for 11 years for opposing the war in Ukraine
Source: Newsday
“A Russian court on Monday convicted a prominent opposition politician for speaking out against the war in Ukraine and sentenced him to 11 years and one month in prison in the latest crackdown leading up to next month’s parliamentary election. The verdict against Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko party, was another step by the Kremlin to stifle dissent since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. Yabloko is the only official political party overtly opposing the war. Shlosberg, 63, is Yabloko’s deputy chairman and served in the regional legislature of Pskov from 2016-21. He stood trial in the city of Pskov, some 600 kilometers (370 miles) northwest of Moscow, on charges of ‘discrediting’ and spreading ‘false information’ about the Russian military.” [editor’s note: Yabloko briefly BECAME the only “official party” opposing the war last month after the Libertarian Party was banned, and was barred from ballots itself earlier this month – TLK] (08/17/26)
https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/russia-ukraine-shlosberg-crackdown-election-yabloko-war-x47119
- SCOTUS again rejects sexual predator’s appeal against $5 million defamation judgment
Source: Reuters
“Rebuffing President Donald Trump for a second time, the U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear his appeal of a $5 million verdict in favor of E. Jean Carroll after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the former magazine columnist. The justices rejected Trump’s request to reconsider their previous decision in June denying his appeal of the 2023 jury verdict stemming from allegations that he raped her in the 1990s in a Manhattan department store’s dressing room. Trump’s lawyers contend that the trial was unfair. The Supreme Court is also weighing the Republican president’s appeal of a separate $83.3 million jury verdict for defaming Carroll in 2019 during his first term as president, when he denied the claims and asserted that she lied about the accusations. Trump’s lawyers in that appeal argue that presidential immunity shields him from Carroll’s claims and that lower courts wrongly decided that he had forfeited that defense.” (08/17/26)
- Mali: Journalist, influencer jailed for seven years for criticising junta
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“A Malian court sentenced on Monday a prominent broadcaster and an influencer, who had both criticised the ruling junta, to seven years in jail, an AFP journalist saw. The sentences are the latest handed to Malians critical of the unstable west African country’s military government, which came to power following back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021. Television and radio commentator Mohamed Youssouf Bathily – alias Ras Bath – was convicted by the court in Bamako of criminal conspiracy and discrediting the state, alongside Rokia Doumbia, a noted campaigner known online as ‘Rose, the cost of living’. Both had been in custody for several years following the airing of a 2023 programme by the journalist dedicated to the economic difficulties facing ordinary Malians.” (08/17/26)
- Senile reality TV star blames vandals for damaged grass at July 4 celebration site
Source: The Hill
“President Trump on Sunday accused vandals of damaging the ground near the World War II Memorial where thousands gathered for a July 4 celebration hosted in conjunction with the White House. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, shared pictures of a grassy field with patches of brown across the lawn. ‘Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,’ he wrote. ‘Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School,’ the president added.” (08/17/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6032714-donald-trump-vandalism-july-4-national-mall/
- Chinese team aims to put “smart” diabetes probiotic on US shelves within two years
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“Chinese researchers have engineered a probiotic that could make diabetes care as simple as drinking a cup of yogurt or swallowing a capsule. The ‘smart’ bacterium, designed to sense high blood sugar and automatically release a glucose-lowering hormone, performed on par with the blockbuster drug Ozempic in animal tests, according to a study published in Nature last week. The team at East China Normal University in Shanghai has already filed patents and is now scaling up production to meet pharmaceutical standards for the US and European markets.” (08/17/26)
- Somalia: Regime troops, opposition clash in Baidoa
Source: US News & World Report
“Somalia’s federal troops and armed opposition groups clashed in heavy fighting in Baidoa city centre on Monday, a local resident and an army officer told Reuters. The administrative capital of South West state, Baidoa is home to international peacekeepers and humanitarian agencies. It is one of Somalia’s largest cities with a population of over a million people. Fresh fighting in the city could compound a dire humanitarian crisis in the area. Baidoa hosts hundreds of thousands of displaced people and one in four children at displacement sites there are severely malnourished, according to a July survey by Medecins Sans Frontieres.” (08/17/26)
- FBI “back-burnered” Epstein tip from Hugh Hefner
Source: AOL
“The FBI should not have ‘back-burnered’ a 2005 tip from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner that Jeffrey Epstein had trafficked and sexually abused Playmate Audra Christiansen, a former federal agent says. Christiansen says Hefner, at her urging, made multiple reports to the FBI more than two decades ago but the agency did not immediately follow up. Court documents in a lawsuit filed on behalf of dozens of Epstein survivors say the FBI eventually contacted Christiansen — but not until 2020 after Epstein’s jailhouse death.” (08/16/26)
https://www.aol.com/articles/no-excuse-fbi-ignoring-hef-032945000.html
- When does protest become terrorism?
Source: Project Liberal
by Oliver Gale“How the UK is changing the rules on petty crime to attack free speech.” (08/17/26)
https://projectliberal.substack.com/p/when-does-protest-become-terrorism
- Israel creates fake think tank in likely attempt to dupe AI chatbots
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Nick Cleveland-Stout“At a glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine. The organization churns out think-tank style reports on questions such as ‘Does AIPAC Use ‘Dark Money in Elections?’ and ‘Is Israel Carrying out a Deliberate Campaign of Starvation in Gaza?’ But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank. None of the reports have bylines. A small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage notes that the organization was created on behalf of the Israeli Government Advertising Agency by Piro, Inc, a firm co-founded by Daniel Rosenberg, the producer of Spike Lee’s ‘Inside Man.’ The Hanover Institute’s reports — all of which are about Israel and Palestine — appear to be part of an Israeli effort to influence chatbots.” (08/17/26)
- Quantum Vibe, 08/17/26
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott BieserCartoon. (08/17/26)
- The Price of Fed Silence
Source: The Daily Economy
by Stephen Lewarne“When the Fed withholds information, markets don’t stop searching — they simply reward those with privileged access.” (08/17/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-price-of-fed-silence/
- What Exactly Is “Narcoterrorism?”
Source: Libertarian Institute
by José Niño“Credit for the coinage belongs to Peru’s Fernando Belaúnde Terry. Foreign Policy traces his first use to 1982, after Shining Path hit a prison and a police station, when he called what he saw ‘narco-terrorism — the union of the vice of narcotics with the violence of terrorism.’ The SAGE Encyclopedia of Terrorism places the birth year at 1983 instead. The date stays unsettled because the idea underneath never firmed up. Experts remain split over whether the term ‘designates too broad a range of activities to be definitive.’ Elasticity proved to be the feature. … Every fresh narcoterrorism designation narrows the space between a criminal suspect and a lawful target, and it narrows that space inside their own borders first.” (08/17/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/what-exactly-is-narcoterrorism/
- Medicare-for-all, private insurance for none
Source: Washington Post
by Ramesh Ponnuru“Americans, for all their complaints about the health care system, generally dread the prospect of Washington disrupting their insurance. Many surveys have found that most people are satisfied with what they have. When Bill Clinton proposed a more government-run system a generation ago, the most potent attack against it was that it threatened that coverage. Barack Obama, having learned from Clinton’s failure to enact his legislation, made ‘if you like your plan, you can keep your plan’ a central promise of his own health policy. The lowest political moment for Obamacare was when that promise didn’t bear out for 4 million people who saw their plans canceled. … Medicare-for-all would impose more radical disruptions on the health care system than any of these earlier proposals and laws.” (08/17/26)
- Chaos and the Birth of Order
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Charles Krblich“Growing up, I never cared for Mathematics. It was too logical, bland, boring, difficult, and when contrasted against the stories, battles, wars, glory, destruction, growth, and exploration that was History, I never gave it a fair chance. So it was one of the little ironies of life, that I came to do Mathematics for a living. Focused study softened the difficulty, and armed with growing knowledge, bland and boring transformed to mildly charming. With new perspective, I discovered what has since become my favorite toy, a Galton Board. The toy is a small window into our experience over the last several years in which our free and independent lives have clashed broadly against arcane, top-down rules conceived by bureaucrats.” (08/17/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/chaos-and-the-birth-of-order/
- The Capacity to Control
Source: Law & Liberty
by Héctor Cárdenes Roque“Europe is assembling, one defensible step at a time, a standing capacity for verifying who may enter the ordinary spaces of online life.” (08/17/26)
- Trump Shouldn’t Make Another Iran Mistake in Cuba
Source: The American Conservative
by Chris McCallion & Daniel R DePetris“Even as the Trump administration doubles down on its failed Iran war, it’s also laying the groundwork for military action much closer to home, in Cuba. The Trump administration claims Cuba is a nefarious presence in the Western Hemisphere and a local proxy for Russia and China. Now it seems intent on toppling the Havana government. … There’s a better alternative to Washington’s failed hardline policy. The United States could normalize relations with Cuba, an act that would increase trade, strengthen tourism, and open up Cuba to further liberalization and internal reform. This is precisely what the Obama administration began pursuing in its second term, a process aborted in President Donald Trump’s first year in office in favor of the kind of ‘maximum pressure’ policy he pursued against Iran. We know how well that turned out.” (08/17/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trump-shouldnt-make-another-iran-mistake-in-cuba/
- China and the Uyghurs: Truth vs. Tall Tales
Source: The Realist Review
by Stephan Ossenkopf“Western media coverage is full of horror stories about the alleged repressive treatment by the Chinese leadership of Muslim Uyghurs in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. It is rife with allegations, speculation, and accusations. But who really knows anything about the situation on the ground and is aware of where this slander originates, whether there are evidentiary sources for it, and what purpose it truly serves?” (08/17/26)
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/china-and-the-uyghurs-truth-vs-tall
- Korea and Brazil at the Negotiating Table
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott“In the coming weeks, a delegation of South Korean food safety officials will take an extensive tour of Brazilian meat processing plants, checking everything from chilling temperatures and drainage to the paper trail that charts the meat’s journey. The mission of officials was agreed at a presidential summit in July 2026 and is, in every sense that matters, the trade negotiation in action. Long stalled, the Korea–Mercosur trade talks have been revived as each nation adapts to the shifting sands of the international order; but the gap between political theater and technical progress is unusually wide between the two sides.” (08/17/26)
https://fee.org/articles/korea-and-brazil-at-the-negotiating-table/
- The Pub and the Prep School: Two Deaths, One Cause
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie“The pub has been dying for a generation, but the pace has quickened sharply. The British Beer and Pub Association recorded 161 closures in the first quarter of 2026 alone, up 26 per cent on the same period the year before. That is two pubs shutting every day. … The prep school has followed a similar arc, on a shorter timetable. Twenty per cent VAT landed on school fees in January 2025. Most schools also lost the charitable rates relief that had cut their bills by up to 80 per cent. By January 2026, 105 independent schools had closed or been folded into mergers, more than 25,000 pupils displaced. … The pattern in both cases is the same. Government does not set out to destroy an institution. It raises the cost of employing people, taxes an activity that used to be exempt, and withdraws a relief that had cushioned the blow.” (08/17/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-pub-and-the-prep-school-two-deaths-one-cause
- Closing Federal Prisons: A Winning Hand
Source: RealClearPolitics
by Marc A Levin & Khalil A Cumberbatch“For decades, the War on Drugs, mandatory minimum sentences, and other dynamics kept our nation’s federal prisons packed to the rafters, with many facilities operating well beyond their design capacity. But now the Trump administration is poised to do what once seemed unthinkable: Close prisons. This welcome occasion is not a matter of luck. It reflects falling crime, fewer people sentenced for drug offenses. and prisoners earning time off their sentences by completing programs and staying out of trouble. It all adds up to a shrinking inmate population, prompting the Bureau of Prisons to announce plans to shutter six of its lockups. This will spare taxpayers the cost of running half-empty facilities and free up savings to reinvest in measures that reduce reoffending.” (08/16/26)
- The Feral Spectacle of the Radical Blockbuster Movie
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid“Back in nineteen-ninety-something, escaping reality was still a collective experience. You and your brother and a dozen strangers that were just as bored as you getting together over dangerously over-salted butter popcorn to watch Quentin Tarantino kill just enough people to squeak by with an R rating. It’s all gone now. It’s all over. Everything is digital. Everything has been separated from the fragile fingertips of another actual sentient human being by fifty-five layers of synthetic software. Hollywood is dead and Marvel buried it in an empty computer box. Everything has been reduced to a formula, from the tightly focus-group tested plot of another poorly regurgitated superhero saga of good versus evil to the computer generated, greenscreen special effects of an AI animated cartoon with the faces of A-list celebrities pasted to the action.” (08/16/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-feral-spectacle-of-radical.html
- The 50% Canadian Tariff Myth: Why Washington Is Taxing Americans, Not Canada
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey“More tariff fun with our neighbors to the north coming up this week. Trump’s dumb Canadian tariffs drop this coming Wednesday, imposing a punitive 50% tax on Canadian imports to the United States. This includes steel, aluminum, lumber, cement, and various consumer goods. Emergency talks are underway, and hopefully, before you read this, the situation will have been resolved, but not likely. And the gaslighting of the American people continues under Trump, trying to make it sound like Americans are not paying extra for goods caught in the tariff net, but the bottom line is. The Trump administration attempts to sell tariffs as some kind of bizarre patriotic weapon to punish foreign governments for taking advantage of us financially, but the only ones penalized are American businesses and consumers.” (08/16/26)
https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/the-50-canadian-tariff-myth-why-washington
- Reason Roundtable, 08/17/26
- Rising, 08/17/26
Source: The Hill
“obby Soave gives his radar on Candace Owens saying she thinks there’s a ‘zero percent’ chance that Tyler Robinson, the man accused of murdering Charlie Kirk, is the true culprit.” (08/17/26)
- The Vital Center, episode 97
Source: Niskanen Center
“Richard Nixon’s elusive totality, with Lee Huebner.” (08/17/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/richard-nixons-elusive-totality-with-lee-huebner
- Everyday Samurai Life, episode 71
Source: Everyday Samurai
“Not Civil War.” (08/17/26)
- EconTalk, 08/17/26
Source: EconTalk
“The Hidden Cause of the Industrial Revolution (with Ben Southwood).” (08/17/26)
https://www.econtalk.org/the-hidden-cause-of-the-industrial-revolution-with-ben-southwood/
- The Kyle Anzalone Showa, 08/17/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski: RUBIO V. Vance: The White House Factions Frustrating Trump?” (08/17/26)
- The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 08/17/26
Source: The Dispatch
“Americans: An Ungovernable People | Interview: Kevin D. Williamson.” (08/17/26)
- The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 08/17/26
Source: The New Republic
“Trump’s Angry Tirade over Gas Prices Backfires in Humiliating Self-Own.” (08/17/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/214393/trump-angry-tirade-gas-prices-backfires-humiliating-self-own
- The Climate Realism Show, episode 212
Source: Heartland Institute
“The Climate Regulations Driving Up Costs Across America.” (08/17/26)
https://heartland.org/podcasts/the-climate-regulations-driving-up-costs-across-america-212/
- TechTank, season 5, episode 47
Source: Brookings Institution
“Building resilience in concentrated cyber ecosystems.” (08/17/26)
https://shows.acast.com/tech-tank/episodes/building-resilience-in-concentrated-cyber-ecosystems
- The Kyle Anzalone Show, 08/16/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Loomer Sits Down With Ukraine Neo-Nazi.” (08/16/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/blog/the-kyle-anzalone-show-loomer-sits-down-with-ukraine-neo-nazi/
- Neon Liberalism, episode 86
Source: Liberal Currents
“Samantha is joined by Sonja Trauss, president and founder of YIMBY Law, to discuss the state of the housing movement.” (08/16/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-moral-case-for-dynamism-neon-liberalism-86-with-sonja-trauss/
- Parallax Views w/ JG Michael, 08/16/26
Source: Parallax Views w/ JG Michael
“A Democratic Strategist on the Future of the Democratic Party w/ Maya Rupert.” (08/16/26)